He says he is "building a body of work" that is designed to "somehow showcase different aspects of the African American experience. Lee, who has made 18 films, says there are many more black filmmakers and actors working today than when he began nearly twenty years ago. 'Cause who's to say they're not going to bring back the draft?" When you get out of that American Idol, Survivor, Joe Millionaire, Temptation Island mode of thinking, leave that alone for a second and deal with some stuff that's really impacting your lives. I'm not asking you to think my way, what I am asking is to question and don't just digest everything that you read or see on television. Turning serious, the director of Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X said, "It's very important that young people become conscious and understand what's happening in the world. Strangelove, please go check that film out and see if that character played by the great actor Sterling Haden is not a dead ringer for Rumsfeld," Lee said. For those of you who've not seen one of the greatest anti-war films ever, directed by Stanley Kubrick, Dr. And it's funny how a lot of times art mirrors life and vice versa. "Being against the war does not necessarily mean that you are unpatriotic. is waging war on Iraq, he supports the American troops. That stuff's really been to the detriment of the movie-going audience, I think." (photo at left shows Lee with Bob Hershberger, assistant professor of Spanish and Film at DePauw)ĭuring his Ubben Lecture, Lee told the approximately 2,100 people in Neal Fieldhouse of the Lilly Center that while he is unhappy that the U.S. Now every newspaper in America on Monday prints the top 10 grossing films of the past weekend, so the audience is much more aware of how much everybody's getting, how much films cost, how much they've made, and sometimes I think they think that's even more important than whether the film is good or not. Audiences weren't aware of the grosses of films. " Jaws really brought about the world of blockbuster, where you made huge amounts of money on the opening weekend. Lee says Hollywood, and the public, became obsessed with box office receipts in the mid-1970's, an obsession that continues to this day. So, they were not going to take that chance to affect the bottom line." (Lee is seen at right with DePauw's director of media relations, Ken Owen '82) They did not know how American audiences, and if they didn't know how American audiences would react there was a good chance they would react negatively and that would reflect on the box office. Lee, called "not only one of the best filmmakers in America, but one of the most crucially important," by film critic Roger Ebert, says Hollywood avoided films with plots related to terrorism, and even removed shots of the World Trade Center from movies about to be released, because "they were worried. Pulliam Center for Contemporary Media, Lee said that among filmmakers, "There was a self-imposed moratorium at least a year, but we're definitely gonna see films, Bruckheimer films about the stuff." Jerry Bruckheimer is a film producer responsible for such films as Top Gun and Pearl Harbor. At an afternoon media briefing at DePauw's Eugene S. Lee, at DePauw to deliver a Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture, depicted post 9/11 New York in his latest, acclaimed film, 25th Hour. Calling the current world climate "chaotic," director, producer, writer and actor Spike Lee predicts more Hollywood films will deal with the events of Septemand the aftermath.
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